Crazy Love
by zeldazonk
Summary: The first and definitive Modern-Moulin fanfiction, being rewritten once more. What if Moulin Rouge was set in 1978 during the hectic glory days of Studio 54? And what if the souls of Christian and Satine were transplanted in others?
1. Prologue

A/N: This, I PROMISE YOU, is the FINAL rewrite of Crazy Love, the definitive Moulin Rouge-modern-day story and also the first. (I'm so vain.)  
  
Theirs was a love of old romantic films. It was a love that began like an old Clara Bow movie, dug up from the archives of the past, crackling with rediscovery, sparkling as you are drawn into its spell. Theirs was a love that could only grow and flourish like a rosebud, but soon it, would wilt, as a rose must. Their love became shadows, ashes of roses that would linger on forever in the minds of those who had witnessed it.  
  
They, too, were dug up from the archives of the past. They became a 20th century whore and a writer. They became a groupie and a bandleader in 1969. They became a singer and a guitarist, star-crossed in Los Angeles. They became a Broadway hopeful and a poet in the glamour of New York City. They became others, yet they stayed as themselves. Their names were different, but they were the same. Their souls were in those of the others whose lives they'd been chosen to inherit. Over and over that simple story repeated itself, as time and love are wont to do.  
  
This is one of the many tales of their fated love. Among the others it may seem simple and as uninteresting as dust. But this, this is the story of Christian and Satine. As it is meant to be told. 


	2. Chapter One

A/N: You'll notice some of the characters have changed.  
  
August, 1978  
  
She was confused at first, confused by the mass confusion that in itself was the city of New York. It was unbearably hot; the sunlight bounced off the rough stone of buildings, rubbed off on the thousands of sweaty bodies, and absorbed into the cement. All about them the smell of exhaust and melting tar permeated the air, which was so thick Satine almost cup it in her hand. The taxi's leather seats were moist with humidity and her legs stuck to them, clinging as she tried to stand.  
  
Moving her possessions was a far worse task than simply sitting in the backseat of the stifling cab. After unlocking the small apartment that she'd recently purchased, Satine had to set about the daunting task of unloading her things. The pavement seemingly blazed through the plastic of her red thong shoes and to avoid getting a third degree burn from the metal of the taxi, she had to do a ridiculous dance around it. Thankfully the movers were coming with her more hefty furniture, which left her with---how many was it?---ten boxes. Great.  
  
Her apartment did not offer air conditioning, so the first thing she did was place a huge oscillating fan by the window, where the breeze would hit her right as she opened the door. After the fan was placed to her liking, her sweating hands fumbled with the lock caging her pet tabby, Kermit. Upon being released, the gray cat raced to plunk himself right in front of the aforementioned fan. Satine scowled, wishing she could do the same. But no, there was work to do.  
  
  
  
It was two hours before the movers came, cursing the whole up the three flights of stairs. Satine didn't blame them, because what they were carrying couldn't have been much easier than carrying an elephant. She stood by the doorway, trembling in fright that they'd drop her precious baby down the steps, imagining the dissonant noises a broken piano would make. They were persistent, though, and their hard work paid off. Sweating and still cussing, they set the piano down where Satine pointed and accepted the glasses of water she offered them. "Huge fucking motherfucker," one swore, glaring at the gleaming white instrument.  
  
"Life's a shit sandwich." Added another. "Where d'ya want us to unload the other shit, kiddo?" "I can help you . . ." Satine began, but they cut her off.  
  
"Let a pretty little thing like you haul those big things up the stairs? Whaddya think we are, stupid?" The heavy Brooklyn accents made Satine laugh inwardly, and she grinned.  
  
While they groaned and cursed their way through her furniture moving, Satine surveyed the place that would now be her home. Gone was the massive Nevada mansion that her parents had owned, and in its place was a tiny New York apartment, in a building full of old hippies and Studio 54 partiers who listened to Janis Joplin and Mozart at ear-shattering levels and painted peace signs on their doors. Gone were the creamy linen colored walls, and in their place was a huge mural of famous faces. Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, and others stared at her. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers jitterbugged across a cerulean sky dotted with silver stars while Bette Davis and Joan Crawford pouted sexily and Rudolph Valentino stared deeply into the eyes of Pola Negri. Gone, too, were the whispers of silk hanging from the windows. Now Indian saris drifted gracefully to the floor, which was a dreary but smooth maple covered in pseudo-Oriental rugs. Gone were the servants and in their place was Satine, who would now have to make her own meals.  
  
  
  
She didn't miss the luxury. She didn't miss her overbearing but distant parents. She didn't miss Nevada. She didn't miss anyone or anything except her grandmother and her brother, whose portraits sat in silver frames on the minuscule television. Satine, in all her "I'm-away-from-home- and-my-parents" glory, did cartwheels and laughed like a giddy child. When the men came back with her yellow couch embroidered with huge, gaudy pink cabbage roses, they smiled to see her lanky form flipping around them like a circus performer. "Whaddya do, anyway? What brings ya to New York?" The one named Al asked, patting his protruding stomach and swigging his water as one might swig beer. (And Satine was pretty sure he could do that well, judging from his size.)  
  
"I'm a writer. Well, I want to be, anyway."  
  
"Like books, writer?"  
  
"No. I want to be a journalist. Like Walter Cronkite."  
  
"Ah, I see. Well, that's pretty cool." He scratched his chin and Satine could hear the rough scraping of stubble and skin, like sandpaper against wood. "Anyway, baby doll, we're gonna take off now. Pay up, princess."  
  
"Oh, yeah." Satine stared blankly for a moment, then rummaged in a cupboard for her purse. "How much do I owe you?"  
  
"Normally it'd be about seventy, but since you're such a doll," he winked for emphasis, "we'll take . . . fifty."  
  
"Great." She shelled out the cash and put it in Al's warm, coarse hand. "Thanks so much."  
  
And then they were gone.  
  
  
  
She sat unmoving on the piano bench for what seemed like hours, staring out the window, staring at nothing. When her fingers moved to touch the smooth, cool shine of the keys, no music could come pouring out.  
  
Songwriting was her hobby. She'd filled three-ring binders to the point of breaking with her songs, but tonight nothing would come. Words, music, brain, and hands would not cooperate. "Damn, damn, damn!" A jumbled mess of notes from Satine's frustrated hands seemed to signal what was to come next.  
  
"Hello!" Came a male voice, high-pitched but definitely masculine. "Hello, neighbor!"  
  
"H-hello," she called back, leaving her place at the piano and walking towards the door. Satine stopped short, remembering her glamorous outfit of tattered jeans, paint-stained black t-shirt, makeup free face and hair greasy in a ponytail. "I look like shit, but come in anyway."  
  
Where she'd thought it was only one person, four more crowded in. All three women were wearing bright, gaudy makeup and glittery clothing, and the two men wore white leisure suits of a polyester shine. They looked as though they were going out and made Satine feel ashamed of her appearance. "I'm Toulouse," said the man who'd yelled from her door. What surprised Satine was not the name of a famous painter but that this man, too, was of a very short stature; his head only reached her midriff. "I'm your next- floor neighbor. Call me Lucy."  
  
"Hi. I'm Satine." She extended her hand and he shook it.  
  
"This is Mari," he pointed to the blonde wearing the gold halter and gold hot pants who grinned and waved. "And Deb." Deb was the brunette dressed the same, save for green instead of gold. "And Amalia." She was the dainty Asian with silky black hair and a blinding silver dress.  
  
"And I'm Omar, but you can call me Chocolat because everyone does," came the rich voice of the man with skin like coffee grounds. His surprising emerald eyes met hers and in that glimmer of green she saw an enormous sadness though he hid it very well.  
  
"I'm so glad to meet you all!" And she was, because if there was one thing Satine hated, it was loneliness.  
  
"We've come to ask you," Mari began, "to come with us."  
  
"Where?"  
  
"54."  
  
"Really? I've always wanted to go there! But I can't!"  
  
"Why not?" Asked Chocolat, grinning to display perfect milk-white teeth.  
  
"Look at me! I just moved in and all . . ." Satine's nervous eyes roved about her apartment.  
  
"That's where we come in," said Deb in her Jackie O. voice. "Get in the shower, sweetie."  
  
  
  
When Satine's new friends had finished with her, she looked like someone who'd stepped out of a fashion spread. The long auburn curls were pulled up into a high ponytail that grazed her shoulders by Amalia's talented hands and she'd stepped into her favorite dress: black, spaghetti strapped and falling to the lower part of her thigh in a slim skirt. The straps and bodice were dazzling with intricate rhinestone beading and her high heels were the same.  
  
Satine was, admittedly, strikingly beautiful. Her skin was a luminous Marilyn-Monroe-pale and contrasted shockingly with her dark red hair. The eyes were blue, deep-set and laced with dark but short lashes. Though redheads weren't supposed to wear crimson lipstick, Satine applied it anyway. After all, this was the legendary Studio 54 and this was 1978. Who listened to makeup rules anymore? Besides, it brought out her eye color even more than the dark eyeliner did.  
  
"Are you girls ready yet?" Through the door wafted sweetish cigarette smoke and on it the voice of Lucy.  
  
"Just about! Hold your frickin' pants on!" Deb's Jackie O. voice was now not so cultured and calm, but louder and more high-pitched by the drink she held in her hand.  
  
"We know you can't wait to see Stine all dolled up and sexy as she is!" Added Mari, bestowing a plum-colored lipstick mark on Satine's cheek.  
  
"Exactly!" Echoed Chocolat, dancing into the room with Lucy, looking like a powered-chocolate Fred Astaire with a petite goateed Ginger Rogers on his arm. They stopped short, however, when Satine turned around to face them. Lucy gave a low wolf whistle when his new neighbor sashayed over to them, moving her hips like a pendulum. She grinned, tossed her ponytail, and took Lucy's offered arm.  
  
"To 54!" They chorused, looking like an offbeat Wizard of Oz group, lighthearted and giddy.  
  
  
  
She'd always been a dreamer, always a hopeless romantic. She'd always wanted someone to sweep her off her feet at an unexpected moment, and in New York City, Satine hoped it would happen.  
  
She had no idea how soon it would. 


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two  
  
She heard it long before she saw it. Donna Summer's orgasmic "Love to Love You" was blasting through the streets of Manhattan above all other noise. The sun had set hours ago and the night had cloaked the busy city in midnight blue. Lights of the skyscraping buildings dotted the sky and reflected onto the water; blue, green, red streamers in that ocean. Manhattan was so alive with music and life that even the Statue of Liberty seemed to dance.  
  
"Viva la boheme!" Lucy howled to the night sky, tipping up the empty glass of Kahlua to catch the last few fiery drops.  
  
"The children of the revolution!" Satine added her voice to the gaiety her friends shared, throwing her arms drunkenly (though she'd only had one martini) around Chocolat and kissing his smooth, Hershey's-chocolate- scented cheek.  
  
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Amalia asked, draping her legs out the side of Chocolat's black convertible.  
  
"Vegas," Satine answered absently. Her attention was more fixed on the flashing city than on Amalia's question. It was such a swirl, more so than Las Vegas could ever be. In Vegas, there were thousands of people. But in Manhattan, they possessed a different quality. During the day, the people here were pale and rushed, carrying briefcases. But at night, they changed and became glittering mirages, wearing Versace and Chanel, clicking expensive heels three times to be transported to the magical land of Studio 54, Manhattan's very own Land of Oz.  
  
She entered trembling in excitement and fear. What Satine saw before her was amazing. It was dark, crowded, and loud upon first entering. Scents mingled provocatively as the audience: perfume, smoke, liquor, sweat. Dancing bodies shimmered in the flashing pink, red, blue, green, silver lights, blinding her momentarily with their bright, flamboyant clothing. "I Love the Nightlife" was blaring from the speakers and Satine watched, transfixed, as a young woman gyrated wildly, roller skates on her feet, dangerously rolling atop a platform. "What do you think?" Mari asked, a mass of gold hair, eyes, skin, and clothing.  
  
"It's---it's unbelievable."  
  
"It is," she agreed. "Let's dance." Gold-painted fingernails dug into Satine's skin as the Oscar on heels pulled her out onto the dance floor, followed by Jackie O. -Deb and cool silver Amalia. Lucy had pressed a margarita into her hand and Satine downed it greedily; she could now feel the wooziness of liquor pulsing in her veins. Her blood was pumping in overdrive and she was unable to stop laughing. While dancing, she could be wild, sexy, free. She wasn't self-conscious. While dancing, she was not just Satine but everyone else, Donna Summer included. She could feel their hearts pounding alongside hers, feel the pulse of the music floating through their veins, hear their thoughts.  
  
The music stopped and so did the loud chatter-dance of the crowd. Stillness seeped into everything for a few fleeting moments. The lights were the color of grenadine on their bodies, illuminating them in red nearly as thick as the silence.  
  
Suddenly, music exploded. Andrea True was singing her blatantly sexual "More, More, More" and couples were swaying and grinding as though there would be no tomorrow.  
  
And alone he stood, the now silver-blue lights on his shimmering skin. Satine quit dancing and grabbed Deb's arm. "Who is THAT?" She asked, pointing to the beautiful man.  
  
"Christian," was Deb's answer.  
  
  
  
Christian. He was beautiful. Sweat glistened on his bare chest. Black hair was tousled like a little boy's and the green-gray-blue chameleon eyes were electric. Glitter that had fallen from the ceiling like rain coated his perfect body and reflected against the light of the disco ball, making him sparkle like a diamond. He moved with an easy grace, something special that no other man on the floor could capture.  
  
"God." She whispered, unable to say more.  
  
"Isn't he perfection? He's like a legend here. The Great Christian, we call him. He's a friend of Lucy's, mostly. Gorgeous. Everyone wants to sleep with him but I guess he doesn't give in. You gotta be special to catch his eye."  
  
In the three minutes of the song, glances between shy rhinestoned redhead and glitter-god became more and more frequent. When Andrea True was finally done gasping out the words and something slow took over, he approached her. She hadn't known that eight short footsteps could send her heart racing and pounding like they did. He held out his hand. She extended hers to grab it and when they touched, electricity crackled between them.  
  
"Did you feel that?" He whispered into her ear. "I think you were expecting me."  
  
"All my life," she murmured back.  
  
"I'm Christian."  
  
"I'm Satine."  
  
"You're new."  
  
"You're obviously not."  
  
"To tell you the truth," he began, whipping her away from him in a quick motion. "I'm not a disco fan."  
  
"Really?" She asked, her hands around his neck, his on her waist. They were coated with raspberry-syrup colored light and all she could smell was her perfume and his cologne. All she felt inside her liquored veins was small currents of energy.  
  
"Nope."  
  
"What do you like?"  
  
"Classics," another flick of his wrist and she was gone. "Sinatra. Billie Holliday. Elton John, The Beatles, Janis Joplin."  
  
"Me too. I just like disco when I feel like dancing."  
  
"You're going to fall in love with me." Not a statement; this was a command.  
  
"Oh?" She arched her eyebrows and tried to hide her surprise. "How are you so sure?"  
  
"I can see it in your eyes. Can't you see it in mine? I'm in love with you already."  
  
"Can I be cheesy for a minute?"  
  
His laugh was celestial music to her ears. "Of course. I've done it. Your turn."  
  
"What's your sign?"  
  
"Gemini."  
  
"Fuck."  
  
"Right here?" His eyes were now deep green, darker than Deb's dress but just as glittering.  
  
"No. I'm a Gemini too."  
  
"Twins. You and me, stellar twins."  
  
"I'm glad it's you and not that guy over there," she pointed to a man in a gold shirt unbuttoned in a V to show thick, curling chest hair decorated with about fifty gaudy gold chains. "Who does he think he is?"  
  
"Liberace."  
  
"Oh, my God. I hate the Bee Gees," Satine said as soon as the music changed to "Stayin' Alive." A loud whoop came from the crowd. "Damn John Travolta."  
  
He grabbed her hand. "Let's go outside, then."  
  
"Thank you for rescuing me from nasal chipmunks, charming prince."  
  
"That's my job. I am Sir Christian, made to save fair princesses from the clutches of the Gibb brothers."  
  
  
  
He took her outside where she could breathe and not inhale perfume and smoke. She sought out Chocolat's convertible and perched on the trunk with him by her side. They didn't speak for a few minutes, both of them regaining their composure. The little sparks first felt between them was now full-fledged electricity coursing through their veins.  
  
"What do you do?" Satine asked. "For a job, I mean."  
  
"I'm an actor."  
  
"Oh!"  
  
"Haven't done anything major yet. I'm waiting, though."  
  
"Do you want to do movies? Television? Theatre?"  
  
"Theatre."  
  
"I can see you as Romeo, rescuing Juliet from 'Saturday Night Fever.'"  
  
"What do you do, Miss I-Hate-the-Bee-Gees?"  
  
"I'm a writer."  
  
"Songs? Books? Screenplays?"  
  
"I do a little songwriting, but I want to be a journalist."  
  
"It must be fate, Satine."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Well, I happen to work at NBC Studios."  
  
Her eyes grew large. "You do?"  
  
"It's fate. You and I, we're fated. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Rick and Ilsa, Gable and Lombard, Christian and Satine."  
  
"Christian, I'm in love with you." Point blank is always the best way, Granny Jo had told her as a small girl. The lesson stuck.  
  
"I'm in love with you too. But I can't love you."  
  
Satine raised her eyebrows. "You're gay?"  
  
Christian laughed again, shaking his head. "No. I just can't. It's hard to explain."  
  
"I wouldn't have been surprised if you were gay. You're too pretty to be straight."  
  
  
  
In all actuality, his relationship with Nina Dvorak was far from complicated. She was fortyish, married to a man twenty years older, rolling in cash. Her husband just happened to be a big theater mogul and Christian just happened to be exactly what Nina Dvorak was looking for. Their situation was simple: she paid him for favors under the guise of being his aunt. That way, her husband would think nothing of his pretty (albeit bitter and a good friend of the whiskey bottle) wife going off to see her nephew. Nina fueled Christian's acting career; there wasn't any harm in a little screwing for a bit part, was there? It pained him, though, to have to break it to Satine.  
  
Satine was like nobody he'd ever been with before, and he'd known her only twelve minutes and eleven seconds. (But who was counting?) She was innocent and worldly, glam but naïve, sweet yet dangerously sexy, funny, beautiful, Gemini just like himself.  
  
"You can't?" Satine's little wounded voice interrupted his thoughts. "Why?"  
  
"I'm a kept man, Satine." Gravely the awful truth was stated, chameleon eyes meeting crystal blue ones.  
  
"A kept man! I never would have thought. It's like we're living Breakfast at Tiffany's, isn't it?"  
  
"You don't hate me?"  
  
"No. You're my Gemini-fate-lover. I can't possibly hate you."  
  
"Good. Let's go inside, Holly Golightly. Bee Gees have quit."  
  
Now Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" had the partiers dancing. Satine sang along for the hell of it. She liked this song. "Don't leave me this way! I can't survive, can't stay alive without your love, oh baby, don't leave me this way!"  
  
She'd lost Lucy, Chocolat, and the girls in the rainbow of people. But Satine didn't mind, because there was no way she was going to just leave an opportunity behind. "I can't exist; I'll surely miss your tender kiss."  
  
"Don't leave me this way," Christian echoed into her ear when she returned to his arms. "A broken man with empty hands."  
  
"Baby, my heart is full with love and desire for you!"  
  
"Come on down and do what you gotta do." Christian answered in song, wiggling eyebrows suggestively and foolishly.  
  
"For someone who doesn't like disco, you know the words pretty well," Satine stated, mirth in her eyes.  
  
"Well, what do you think happens when I'm here almost every night?" Came his wry reply.  
  
"You started this fire down in my soul, now can't you see? It's burning out of control!"  
  
"Only your good lovin' can set me free." With Satine, Christian could break the chains locking him to Nina.  
  
"Your love is so important to me, baby, I've got to have it."  
  
"Cause it would be wrong to string along a love so true." And then he kissed her. Hard. Heart-poundingly hard. It was a kiss like eating a candy cane and then drinking icy water, refreshing and chilling at the same time. It was a kiss like Christmas morning, expectant the way you are on the morn of your birthday. It was a kiss to rival Casablanca; a kiss to overthrow any other kiss in history, for none could be as passionate, as exhilarating, as perfect as this kiss was.  
  
"Christian?" She whispered when the kiss was finally broken. "Did you feel that?"  
  
"Fireworks." 


	4. Chapter Three

A/N: Sorry updates have been few and far between. It's called school. It's called cheerleading. It's called Kara's life.  
  
If you would have asked her what happened in the next few moments, Satine couldn't have answered. She was in a deep dreamlike trance that would not be broken. And had you asked Christian, he couldn't have answered either. Both were lost completely in the sea of the other's eyes, corny as it sounds.  
  
If this was love, she wanted more.  
  
And then it happened. The defining moment. Her shoe's heel snapped and bang! She fell right into his waiting arms. "Damn. Teaches me not to wear stilettos to a place where I'll be dancing all night long!" Satine used one of Christian's arms to support herself and examined the dangerous shoe. "Look. Cost me fifty dollars and they go and break. Why are you shaking?"  
  
Christian was trembling with uncontrollable laughter. "What's so funny?" Satine asked, raising a perfectly arched eyebrow.  
  
"When you fell. . ." Amid gasps of merriment, he managed to recreate the moment. "You just looked so funny."  
  
She glared, scrunching up her nose in a way that reminded him of one of those soft, feminine rabbits at the zoo. "You're cute when you're mad."  
  
"I am mad. My heel snapped, my rescuer is making fun of me, and I can't seem to find my ride." Scouring the gyrating rainbow of dancers, Satine could see no one that even remotely resembled any of her friends. "And I'm tired. And they're playing Bee Gees again."  
  
"Come on, fair princess. Your knight in shining armor is here to take you home." He offered her his arm, which she eagerly took and hobbled alongside him, leaving the paradise of Studio 54 and entering the paradise of Christian.  
  
Step. "Ow." Step. "Damn." Step. "Shit." Step. "Stupid." Step. "Shoe." Step. "Ow."  
  
"You know what, fair princess?"  
  
"Oh, what, handsome knight?" There was the glimmer of amusement in her eyes that a moment ago had been flashing with frustration.  
  
"I think I shall remove the source of your misery."  
  
"Oh, handsome knight, thou art too kind to this unhappy princess!" She sighed dramatically as he swept her up in his strong arms.  
  
"Fair princess, your voice is heavenly upon my unworthy ears." Fighting to keep his voice straight, Christian carted his bundle of red-white-silver- and-black princess to their transportation. "Where's your car?" She asked.  
  
"I don't have a car."  
  
"What? We have to take a cab, then?"  
  
"No."  
  
"We have to WALK?!"  
  
"No."  
  
"What then?"  
  
"I have a motorcycle."  
  
"Oh, great. A motor-" She stopped her complaining as he set her on the smooth leather of the glittering turquoise vehicle, revved up the engine, and slid on himself. "Hang on tight, fair princess."  
  
Satine wrapped her arms tightly about his waist and laid her head on his shoulder, the motorcycle purring beneath them. With a flick of Christian's wrist they were off into the depths of a Manhattan night.  
  
Cars were but blurs as they sped through the streets and streetlights only glimmers of a rainbow-rush. Satine's hair flew behind her like auburn ribbons on a child's bicycle, creating a Roman-Holiday-esque romanticism about the two of them. "I feel just like Audrey Hepburn," she sighed happily. Her ears were ringing, she smelt terribly of smoke, her stiletto's heel had broken, but that didn't matter. She was in love, she was flying; it was far sweeter than a dream, sweeter than the fairy-tale happily ever after. Intense burning love for Christian boiled in her Irish veins, sugar-spun cotton-candy love. "Oh, I love you."  
  
"What'd you say?" He hollered over the noise of the motorcycle.  
  
"I said, 'I LOVE YOU!'"  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'll tell you when you---where are you taking me?" Her shouting hurt her already hoarse voice.  
  
"To my place," Christian replied nonchalantly.  
  
"Oh . . .'kay."  
  
How completely beautiful she was, how spectacular the night had become. He glanced back for a moment, savoring the vision behind him. Her cheek was on his shoulder and silky hair draped and flew, whipping in the wind the bike created. Short, dusky eyelashes brushed his skin as butterfly wings would and warm, long-fingered hands danced along his waist. A smoky rose scent drifted from her skin, overpowering his senses so much that Christian had to stop and catch his halting breath. Nina was quasi-beautiful and rich. Satine was ethereal and penniless. He'd have to choose between them. One day. But right now, he wasn't thinking of Nina. Oh, no.  
  
Some other day he'd think about that.  
  
She hobbled, barefooted with her shoes dangling from her little finger, behind him while he unlocked the door to his apartment building. "Christ," Satine said. "Your place makes mine look like a ghetto."  
  
Christian laughed. "Fair princess, welcome to my castle." Once they'd climbed three sets of black lacquered stairs and wandered long hallways to the door marked "7E" Satine was up in his arms, kicking her feet and hitting him with the broken shoe. "Do you know something?"  
  
"I know lots of things."  
  
"I adore you. I am completely, madly, irrevocably in passionate love with you and I met you only three hours ago."  
  
She kissed him then, tangling long white piano fingers into his tousled black-brown hair and pushing him up against the door to his apartment. The keys that had been clutched in her free hand clattered to the floor in a jangling symphony along with the rhinestone heels. "I," she managed to breathe when the two were forced to take in air. Kiss. "Love." Kiss. "You." Kiss. "You." Kiss. "Fucker."  
  
  
  
Finally they stumbled in, dizzy from the intoxicating rush of hot, raspberry-syrup passion coursing through their entire bodies. The room was dark, lighted only by a star-shaped fixture dangling from the ceiling. It bathed their forms in a shimmery gold glow and in the glint of blue-green- gray eyes to sapphire ones the two were in each other's arms once more. "God," came Christian's gasp after one more consuming fiery kiss. "When you were a little kid, did you ever make Popsicles in your ice cube tray?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Remember how you'd check them every five minutes to see if they were ready yet?"  
  
She nodded, threading her fingers through his and curling into his embrace. "You could taste them already, that sweet Kool-Aid cherry or grape; it was agony on the hottest days of a Nevada summer," Satine replied. "And once you had them, it was perfection."  
  
"That's how it feels with you. I feel like I've waited for you all my life and checked every five minutes to find you in everything. And now you're here. It's perfection."  
  
"It feels like I'll melt into you or something. This. . .love. . .is so--- it's like an obsession. I've only just met you and you dominate my mind. I'm going to forget to breathe." She paused a moment. "Christian, what can I sleep in? Seeing I don't think my knight errant is going to take me home."  
  
He grinned impishly. "In my bed."  
  
But an hour later, with Satine dressed in a Yankees jersey, it seems they'd forgotten everything about sleeping. Christian's Marilyn Monroe wall clock had just announced the hour of four.  
  
They talked. They discussed everything from Henry VIII to Henry Mancini, Liza Minnelli to the Jackson 5, John Travolta to Jerry Lewis, vampires to Verdi, love and hate, the color of Satine's toenails which she insisted was pink but Christian thought was magenta. They talked until the New York sun came up, painting the room with a blue-pink-yellow ménage of color. They talked until their voices finally gave out and they fell asleep like tired children on the blue sofa, his head in her lap.  
  
The sunrise begins a new day. 


	5. Chapter Four

The sifted sunlight, liquid gold, found its way through her mascara-clumped eyelashes to wake her from her raspberry-syrup sleep.  Satine found herself in a most uncomfortable position; Christian's head on her curled-up knees and hers on his shoulder.  Gently she adjusted her sleeping gallant knight and stood, stretching to relieve the screaming pain of you-contorted-us-and-we're-paying-you-back joints. After glancing at Marilyn, who informed her that it was 10:00 in the a.m. and she'd slept only three hours, Satine stumbled to Christian's bathroom and washed her face.  Makeup ran in streaks down porcelain skin and on an impulse she used his toothbrush to brush her teeth.  Not like he'd mind.

Feeling somewhat refreshed, she stepped out of the Yankees jersey and into the hot droplets of shower water that pounded the smoke stench from her body.  It must have been the most appreciated shower in the history; Satine could literally feel each moment of the previous night slipping off her skin and down the drain.  Moments later she emerged completely relaxed---and dead tired.  

She didn't sleep, though.  Satine wandered the narrow halls of Christian's home, running her fingers across the navy blue walls of the kitchen and making a face at the dirty dishes in the sink and what she supposed were failed attempts at cookies dumped in his garbage.  She studied the pictures on his walls; there were his idols, James Dean, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Cary Grant.  Examining the records that were stacked on an evergreen-colored shelf, she found Nat King Cole, The Beatles, Etta James and Janis Joplin, loads of ballets and soundtracks, and the many volumes of tattered books that were likely his favorites.  The sofa, where he lay still sleeping soundly, was worn and a faded color that was probably once deep green, as were the rugs.  But his apartment wasn't ugly or shabby.  Only in need of a little cleaning.

Feeling like June Cleaver, she rummaged through closets until the holy grail of a broom was in her hands and Christian's wood floor was swept spotless.  Then Satine tackled the kitchen, loading the sink with apple-scented soap until those dishes were in perfect sparkling Mr. Clean-would-be-proud condition.  With Elton John serenading them softly from the record player, Satine faced her slumbering knight-errant and sang along with the flamboyant performer, the broom her partner in a madcap waltz.  

  
"My gift is my song and this one's for you." Gently she brushed a lock of hair from his face.  "You can tell everybody that this is your song.  It may be quite simple now that it's done.  I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind that I put down in words. . ."  
  


  
He hung suspended in the magnetic area between sleep and real life.  One half of his mind drifted freely in dreamland, the other heard faint angelic singing that snapped him awake instantly.  Once bleary gray-green-blue eyes focused, the haze revealed Satine, still wearing that skimpy shirt, hair hanging wet down her back and a broom in her hands, slowly walking about his apartment and lying her hands on each little knickknack momentarily.

"Now you're in the world!" He finished, sleep crackling his voice in a sexy, Rudolph Valentino way. "What are you doing?"

Satine jumped, then thought quickly and answered, "Memorizing each bit of your room so that when I leave, I'll have it with me forever."  
"_Queen Christina.  _You're a Garbo fan?"  
"I've seen all her movies."  
"Multiple times."  
  


She made coffee and it burned bitterly down her throat while she sat at the table, nervously fiddling with the cracked blue mug, waiting for him to get out of the shower, bacon sizzling on the stove in a pool of grease.  "Oh, shit," she swore when it began to splatter over Christian's navy walls.  Racing towards the stove, Satine quickly remedied the situation and guarded that bacon as if it were her own child.  

She was so wrapped up in her Julia Child fantasy that she didn't hear him come up behind her.  Christian, a towel swathed about his slim hips, twined his long arms around her waist and whispered, "Boo!" into her ear.  Satine, startled, dropped the greasy spatula she'd been wielding and it clattered to the floor spattering its bacon-blood everywhere.  "Fuck."

_Silence. _

  
Christian filled that silence, whispering "Leave it" in such a hot, passion-filled tone that Satine's knees went weak and she surrendered to him.  He proceeded to carry her to his bed and make love to her with such fervor that both were numb with the intensity.  

Watching him dress, Satine studied every detail of Christian's absolute perfection.  The lock of hair falling into his eyes, the chameleon eyes now a deep blue-green, the lithe bohemian fingers, the sleepy, hazy, sexy smile.  She memorized the musky smell of the sheets and their skin, the pink polish chipping on her toenails, the tiny indentation between Christian's eyebrows that furrowed adorably when he was deep in concentration, her wet hair smelling of him, his wet hair smelling of her.  

"What are you looking at?" He asked, grinning boyishly.  

"You."  
"Why?"  
"Because you're beautiful." She curled into the warmth of the bedsheets giggling girlishly.  "I think you're totally hot."

A kiss.  "I love you."  
"I know."  
"Don't you love me?"  
"Of course I do."

They kissed in a shadow.  They danced upon cerulean tufts of dreamworld sky.  Their whispered words travel through time to those who carry on their story.  They were in love.  Tears and kisses fall like rain, weaving inexplicably throughout many destinies.  Their death brings new life.  Their love will never die.    
  
  


  
  



End file.
